MOSCOW, February 19 (RIA Novosti) - The recent meteorite strike in Russia’s Urals underlines the necessity of establishing an international asteroid defense system, Russian Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev said on Tuesday.

“The Russian Security Council has repeatedly proposed to develop an interstate target program to counter space threats, such as asteroids, comets and space junk,” Patrushev said in an interview with the Rossiyskaya Gazeta government daily, to be published in Wednesday’s edition.

“Preventing such threats requires the inter-governmental cooperation of states that have the ability to monitor and analyze the situation in near-Earth space,” the official said.

The Russian-proposed meteor defence system makes it possible to protect the Earth against meteors with a radius of 10 metres, like the one that hit Chelyabinsk, to 100 metres. 100-metre asteroids make up the lion’s share of asteroids orbiting the Earth.

So in 7 years with under ground bunkers built and space based sensors for early warning they think they can handle asteroids up to 100m across... but that is the key... Without early warning THEY CAN'T.

They don't always travel at such high speeds. The rock which wiped out the dinosaurs traveled at a mere 4km/sec although I may be getting confused.

The speed is largely determined by where the object comes from... I don't know where a 4km/s asteroid would come from...

The point is that size is more important than speed anyway... a 1km object at any speed would be devastating.

The higher the speed at which the rock hits the atmosphere, the more energy is released by into into the surrounding atmosphere; hence the larger and hotter its enveloping ball of plasma would be and thus its effectiveness at reacting with the asteroid.

But then physics plays another card... the smaller the object the larger its surface area is in relation to its volume... one of the factors that allows the earth to retain a molten core while smaller Mercury has lost its molten core despite being very very close to the sun.

The bigger the incoming object the more likely it is to impact in one piece... of course these objects can come in a range of different shapes like potatoe or even dogs bone or a range of other shapes, just as it can be made of all sorts of materials from ice and dirt like a comet to iron or other metal rich material.

Detonate a nuclear device 10kms above a mountain on earth and the flash will turn any sand on the surface to glass and the vegetation would be burned away in an instant but the rocks... apart from surface loose rocks being blown around a bit will be largely uneffected.

Thus even a 20km/sec asteroid can be completely burnt up before it hits the ground, if its small enough... or its broken down into small enough chunks.

I totally agree, but the problem is that the asteroids that are the real threat are the big hard ones and the features that make them a threat is that our atmosphere can't deal with them and the features that make it hard for our atmosphere to deal with them also makes it hard for explosives and nuclear devices to deal with them too.

Some of the fastest objects come from outside our solar system in the Oort cloud and are actually comets which are just as likely to explode in our atmosphere several kms up rather than actually impact... the obvious problem is that such an airburst could be as lethal as an impact if the object is big enough and therefore the explosion is also big enough.

One of the worst case scenarios would be an enormous impact in the middle of the Pacific or Atlantic ocean causing massive tsunamis over a very wide area where a rock is not big enough to kill a lot of people with its impact, but the resulting tsunami kills millions over a very wide area.

Of course the fully worst case scenario would be a particularly large or super heavy object bumps into us...

It is believed that a planet sized object hit us very early on to create the moon and give us a metal rich core... both of which helped create ideal conditions for life as we know it.

The heat won't be very effective in space; there is no air or anything for the asteroid to react with.

The heat could only travel through empty space as light... just like heat comes to us from the sun as light, which converts some of its energy to heat when it hits objects like the ground.

The problem is closing speeds... if you launch an interceptor... even if it was only going 20km/h the speed of the incoming threat means an impact speed of 10,020km/h or more (likely more) and at such impact speeds we can't make things strong enough to survive that sort of impact except perhaps solid rods of uranium. A nuclear bomb has delicate components that need to operate at very specific and precise intervals to create the explosion so for a nuclear warhead to function properly it can't be a penetrating type because the impact speed (realistically more than double the number above because the interceptor will be moving at several kms/s) will likely vapourise the impactor.

It is like the development work for protecting space stations... a sheet of aluminium 5mm thick would be like tissue paper to even a fleck of paint in an opposite orbit, but satellites need to be light so making aluminium skins 10cm thick is simply not possible... the solution is two layers half a metre apart of 5mm Aluminium... the impactor hits the outer plate and vapourises, so the impactor and the outer skin it penetrated impact the inner plate... still at very high speed but because it has been vapourised into a fine powder its ability to penetrate the inner layer is reduced to zero.

The difference is that the interceptor hitting the outer surface of a meteoroid would also be vapourised and a vapourised nuke will not explode with a proper fusion reaction.

(Sorry I should also explain my terms... a rocky object in space is called a meteoroid... when it is travelling through our atmosphere it is called a meteor, and after it has hit the ground it is a meteorite.)

A penetration from the side meanwhile would require the missile to be travelling as fast or nearly as fast as the meteoroid and have extreme levels of accuracy

Like I said the best solution is early detection... if you have years, then you can wait for it to come close and send probes. For a comet there is even the potential for a robot that can land on its surface and melt some water, convert it into hydrogen and oxygen and then burn it in rocket blasts to change the trajectory of the object to a safer more stable orbit. Obviously it would not be as easy as I make it sound because most objects are spinning.

If we find an object early enough a small nudge from a big nuclear blast might be enough to make it crash into the sun or be captured by Jupiters gravity and swept out of the solar system.

although by that stage breaking it up into pieces, even if successful, will probably only increase its danger.

The most important reason to try to stop an impact is threat to human life so exploding all those nuclear weapons is probably not the best solution as it might do as much long term damage as the impact does in the short term. The impacting material would be irradiated and impact area increased.

Like I said... early detection is the key... then you have a lot more options.

Interesting video. Maybe meteorite was shot by missile to break in peaces and change course of flight.

Wouldn't surprise me if they did take a few shots at it, but I have trouble believing they could hit it from behind like that, considering the speed it was travelling at.

Any thoughts, anyone?

I think the US military might sieze on this if there are any plans by the US government to cut funding for its missile defence systems around the world.

The main stumbling block will be that an international system might result in them having to share some technology they don't want to share so it will likely turn into an international space station largely Russian and European and Japanese and Canadian with American bits that are not for sharing...

Just tell Hillary #$@@, there are human rights issues and also they have oil and the Power of demoCRAZY is unleashed.

I don't like here either... and mainly because she pretends to care about human rights but is very selective about which she bothers to do anything about... ie KLA need to be saved from being sent by trains back to Albania, while hundreds of thousands of black skinned people are brutally murdered in their own country... one gets a full NATO mobilisation for a moral war and the other is largely ignored... yes... I realise it was Madeline Allbrecht rather than Herr Hillary, but they are two heads of the same snake.

Wouldn't surprise me if they did take a few shots at it, but I have trouble believing they could hit it from behind like that, considering the speed it was travelling at.

Not chasing from behind, missile could hit it from side. Radars could measure speed and hight of meteorite and its ballistic curve, so they calculate the point in which missile and meteorite could meet and guide missile to this point. S-300V have two radars, engagement radar and sector scanning radar specially designed for ABM role, so it could track target with one radar and guide missile to meeting point with another radar.

I was personally very mad that it happened in such a fashion that public was not alerted!And here i have to say this: Im not going to be convinced by anybody that the early warning radars like DON-2 or Voronezh-DM are not able to detect objects in close space.An incomming ICBM with independently targeted MIRVs are flying hypersonic through what? Earths core?! Nope... ofcourse it is space.These radars have to be able to calculate impact points and this is done by monitoring the ballistic trajectory all the way from orbit!So they had to detect that meteorite and see it comming. The chain of command of Strategic Rocket forces should had enugh time to trigger alarm atleast a minute or 2 in advance, before the meteorite struck.

This did not happened.And i was thinking how safe we are on earth that astronomers are able to detect all the dangerous meteorites/asteroids early.If that meteorite would have a slight deviation during the initial phase of descent - it could have landed much closer or possibly in Cheliyabinsk city itself.I can imagine what would be the results if that would have happened.It just makes me MAD that: Do we have to learn a lesson each time only after a catastrophic event takes place?

And here i have to say this: Im not going to be convinced by anybody that the early warning radars like DON-2 or Voronezh-DM are not able to detect objects in close space.

Of course they can, but they are not directed in an appropriate direction for that job. You can't give a blind man a drivers licence if he holds his walking stick out his window and drives by "feel". Just as using the Early Warning radars designed to detect ICBM warheads coming over the horizon would not give enough warning, the walking stick would offer too little information too late to the blind man to allow him to safely drive the car.

Think of the earth as a big ball... which it is of course, but the radars we are talking about are positioned to look for things coming over the horizon of the ball towards your patch of the ball... a direction very few meteorites will come from... plus by that time it is too late as those objects are travelling 20km/s or faster in space.

An incomming ICBM with independently targeted MIRVs are flying hypersonic through what? Earths core?! Nope... ofcourse it is space.

They don't rise above the earths surface more than 1-2,000km on their steepest trajectory.

These radars have to be able to calculate impact points and this is done by monitoring the ballistic trajectory all the way from orbit!

Even if they could and they did, they would have little chance of warning anyone... even if they detected the targets at 10,000km range that is about 500 seconds for an object travelling at 20km/s, or about 8 and a half minutes from initial detection to impact... the first thing they have to do is work out what it is... because it will have the wrong trajectory for a missile from the US or anywhere else on earth, but they wont know that till they have a few more bits of data... it will obviously appear to be rather bigger than what they are looking for... is it the moon? The speed of the object would also be something that makes them realise it is not a nuclear attack... the point is that while they are working out what it is and contacting their superiors, who are passing this information further up the chain... most will be thinking nuclear attack, not meteorite danger. When they finally work out it is not a nuclear attack and stand down their forces it will be about impact time anyway... good thing ICBMs don't move that fast because they really would not have enough time otherwise.

So they had to detect that meteorite and see it comming. The chain of command of Strategic Rocket forces should had enugh time to trigger alarm atleast a minute or 2 in advance, before the meteorite struck.

Should they? Did they already have systems in place to alert regional media and regional government? If they did why would there have been a need for changes?

And i was thinking how safe we are on earth that astronomers are able to detect all the dangerous meteorites/asteroids early.

How naive of you... Astronomers often don't detect such things till it is way way too late to do anything about it.

If that meteorite would have a slight deviation during the initial phase of descent - it could have landed much closer or possibly in Cheliyabinsk city itself.

No other country knew it was coming either... it could have easily hit New York and there would not have been any warning then either.

It just makes me MAD that: Do we have to learn a lesson each time only after a catastrophic event takes place?

Yes.

Astronomers have been telling us for decades to look at all the craters on the Moon... that is what Earth would look like if our craters had not been erased by plate tectonics and weather, but everyone largely ignored them.

It was suggested that tsunami warning systems be set up, but nothing was done till one killed so many people.

This site the nearest early warning radar site to the descent trajectory of the meteorite.I have gone through the information that is out there for public to see - some of it is confusing or incomplete, but from what i have seen i have constructed this opinion:The initial Dnestr type radars that were present on this site decades ago were indeed space tracking and surveilance radars. However most of them have been converted to Dnestr-M type. Dnestr-M is a ICBM early warning capability radar able to scan for objects far on horizon (near earth). They have only like 30/35 degrees (some sources claim) maximum scanning envelope - on top of that the beam is only 0.5 degree of elevation. So the first and second generation of ICBM detection radars would be pretty much useless against objects going steep from deep space. However there is the new type Voronezh-VP radar. Reportedly it had 110 degree of scan azimuth, 70 degree of scan elevation, more then 4200 km of range and able to detect object far above 4000 km from earth surface. In essence it is a more potent upgrade to Voronezh-M variant which has the aforementioned capabilities. I was trying to find out what is the bearing of the radar antena - i have found its coordinates and here check this out: http://wikimapia.org/#lang=en&lat=52.855145&lon=103.233451&z=13&m=bIt is built on the site of former Daryal radar - you can see it on the picture. I would say its somewhere arround 135 degrees. So the scanning envelope would be +-55 degrees.That makes it from 80 degrees to 190 degrees? Perhaps it is more south oriented. Those are just my estimations. If anybody is able to find the actual data - i would love nothing more than to see them. But from this you can construct a decent image of where the radar is located, how it is situated and what are its capabilities. Now compare that with the meteorite orbital parameters - i haven't done any calculations - only seen the trajectory of descent. It was not a straight line - and some sources say that initially the meteorite was not flying that fast, it speed up when it came close to orbit (because of gravity) and then again was slowing down because of atmosphere drag. Its trajectory was ballistic because of gravity. That means under certain circumstances even the ICBM radars could pick it out - but what i am fairly convinced is that the Voronezh-VP radar had to pick it up. Look at its steep vertical scan envelope - ok its not 90 degrees but 70 degrees is helluva lot for a ICBM radar. Additionally the new 3rd generation Voronezh radars are said to scan the entire envelope = azimuth and elevation of its sector. They are very fast. I knopw that 20 km /s moving meteorite is not 7-8 km /s MIRV warhead but to the Digital Signal Processing equipment back on earth - its not that much of a differrence you can believe me on that. A Russian laboratory with today COTS equipment was able to simulate the meteorite impact easily. So the meteorite speed (radar reflection) itself could not saturate the radar processing hardware which would result in processing error = object undetected. Im basing this opinion on assumption that Voronezh-VP is using most modern ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) DSP instruments which are even more precise than COTS (common off the shelve) DSP (digital signal processing). In other words: The radars parameters, its position and orientation would be perfectly sufficient for detection of this meteorite. Additionally as some of us know - Russians implemented/ are implementing on then new Voronezh class radars new Command and Control infrastructre. Detecting, indentification and relaying of object data is much faster than before. If the meteorite was going 20 km /s and it would be detected somewhere at the farther detection border of the radar maximum detection range - say 4000 km it would still leave the command roughly 3,5 minutes to identify, track, calculate impact point, warn. 3,5 minutes is hell a lot (in todays terms)! Also take in mind the state of the art Information network implemented at the level of Ministry of emergency situations.Nevertheless Cheliabinsk citizens were not alerted to upcomming danger. Which indicates to me there was a problem somewhere in between the radar and command or the command and the city or region office? This is what drives me mad because - Russians are maintaing HIL (Human in the loop) strategy in many cases, where it could be perfactly automated or remote controlled. You know all the drunkers, sleepers etc. This might have been the cause why the city was not alerted.

The meteor passed above Radar Early Warning Site in Michelevka.The site is comprised of several radars:

It is not and has never been the role of those radar stations to detect and track objects in space that are not US made missiles or bombers. Some of those radars have elevations of up to 70 degrees, but not reason to use that elevation capability... they are looking for threats coming over the horizon from Europe, the US, or China. They are not interested in anything else because there is nothing they could do in the time available to them.

Suggesting they were drunk or asleep is a cheap shot... you might as well blame the US police force for not stopping 11/9... it is not their job, they don't have the tools to do the job.

I would argue that NASA didn't spotted the meteorite.Although there is no direct proof, NASA was very quick to came out with orbital parameters, impact point, speed estimation, mass and other values concerning it. They were very quick to state them considering their statement that they didn't detected the meteorite by any ground station prior to its impact.Then reportedly infrasound stations registered the event and Meteosat-9 sattelite. Sound is going 340 m/s - reportedly the American infrasound station that detected the event was in Alaska 6500 km away. It would take 5 hours for the sound wave to get there. NASA started posting information about aproximated values of the meteorite much sooner. So the math just doesn't add up.

George < This is not about interception. This is about early detection. I don't believe conventional SAM systems would be able to destroy the object. But there is technology that would pierce through this rock like a knife through butter. Experimental to a degree but electromagnetic coil guns - commonly reffered to as railguns would be able to have an impact on that rock. Perhaps directed energy weapons as well. But i wanted to stress out that detection is very important.

Experimental to a degree but electromagnetic coil guns - commonly reffered to as railguns would be able to have an impact on that rock. Perhaps directed energy weapons as well. But i wanted to stress out that detection is very important.

Think of taking those rail guns and pointing the down at a mountain range... would the very small very high velocity projectile from that rail gun obliterate the entire mountain range? Or would it simply burrow a very narrow shaft a few metres into the ground with a crater on top? ...think the latter... and know that the latter is totally pointless.

The reality is that rocks in space get spotted all the time but the reality is that we might never see a rock that is going to hit us till it explodes in our atmosphere. No country on the planet can see everything all the time... and that includes the US.

BTW after a few seconds the origin and direction and likely impact area can be fairly swiftly calculated, plus looking at the colour of the light it produces and the effect of the upper atmosphere can give a very good indication of what it is made of and how it is formed.

The most dangerous target is called a rockpile and is simple a big blob of gravel held together by gravity... hit it with a high velocity penetrator and it will temporarily spread out and then fall back into a pile again with the mass of the penetrator added to it... the ultimate blob...

The problem with these rocks is that if we are to use conventional explosives - since the rock is very strong, dense and heavy, we would need to probably place a charge inside the rock (using a electromagnetic coil gun) and then detonate it. Directed energy weapons would be probably more effective due to the ability to heat the object much sooner - so that it can disintegrate sooner in the atmosphere. Garry it is possible. Im not saying we have those weapons with sufficient parameters, but the theory is there. But we went away from the first and foremost thing: You have to detect it first!